Password AVH Reset

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Did you turn on your Pioneer DVD AVH-XXXX unit only to be greeted by a "Enter Password" page, along with a "Password Hint" page? That's exactly what happened to us after installing a unit that my best friend inherited from a deceased friend. Unfortunately, she's passed and the hint that she gave wasn't good enough for my friend to guess. Now what, I said!!! Some hits seemed to suggest that one needs to bring the unit to Pioneer Service. Even the manual suggests doing so. First, I tried hitting the "reset button" located along the front face plate, towards the bottom right. This didn't work. This would have been too easy, and even the manual states that it doesn't clear everything. Then I stumbled upon the concept of putting the unit into Factory Service Mode. One can actually retrieve the password, by first putting the unit into factory service mode and then by reading an actual ASCII text password file. After not being able to navigate to the specific directory that contains the password file, as I couldn't find a "usr" folder, I noticed and tried successfully by performing a factory reset instead.

First, go here and build a set of boot files required to put your unit into factory service mode:

set Update Flag sbspinfo.ulupdateflag to 0 (Default:Recovery-Update) at 44

set Update Sub Flag to 0 (Default:SD Card) at 48

set UI Update Flag to 0 (Default:non-updating) at 68

CRC32 applied to warp Disabled image.

CRC32 applied to warp Enabled image.

CRC32 applied.

Plug a thumb drive into your computer. I removed all of the files that were already on it, but I'm not sure if this was completely necessary or not. Save all of the files that you just generated onto the thumb drive, by hitting on each file, one at a time. The files that do not open with a "save' dialog window, do not need to be saved, ex. readme.txt, SD*.txt.

If you can't find the page above, or don't want to build your own set of files, here's a rar compressed set that I had generated and used successfully for my password inhibited unit. I would imagine that these should work for most Pioneer AVH DVD units. Please feel free to grab them from the following dropbox rar file, also attached to this forum.

if you do grab my rar compressed file, please make sure that you extract the individual files before copying them over to your thumb drive.

The port that you need to plug the thumb drive into is "port 1". On my unit, AVH-4000NEX, port 1 is the top rear port.

Power up the unit. You should first see the password page, then after a little more time, the Factory Service Menu. Scroll down, select and execute "factory reset".

Voila, "Factory Fresh Unit"!!!

No more password, but actually, we ended up setting a new password along with a new password hint as well. But keep in mind, this is a total factory reset, like the type that first prompts you for your language, etc.

I hope that this help you save the time and effort that I went through and/or throwing out $$$ to pay some greedy person on Ebay, most likely for exactly the same procedure that I've described in this post.

If this works for you, please respond to this topic, as I would love to know that I've helped others out with the same issue and have saved you both time and money.

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Fantastic!!! I have been occasionally checking in and patiently waiting to see if someone would eventually find my article and use the information that I spent time writing up. Where are you hailing from? Canada, France, etc.? A response like this give me the encouragement and desire to continue to give back to the community that I learn so much from. Between Youtube and blogs like this, one can learn so much. It wasn't that long ago that the only way I could learn how to do something was to go to a library and hope that they had a book, magazine, etc. that had the information that I was trying to find.

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It didn't work at first and took some troubleshooting. I was using a 16GB USB drive with no luck. Researching I found info saying to use a 1GB - 4GB USB ONLY. So I found a small USB (1GB) drive and it worked perfect.

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I could not remember my password and was dreading sending it out to Pioneer. Luckily I came across this thread and it worked for the avh4200nex. Literally just used it. Downloaded the .rar file and extracted the files prior to copying to the thumbdrive.

Thanks very much for this! Greatly appreciated!

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THANK YOU SO VERY MUCH!!! This method works for the AVIC-5000NEX AS WELL. My unit has been locked up because the screen calibration went off after the last firmware update and I replaced my battery... Much respect and appreciation. BLESS